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East Boone Township.
This township is situate in the north tier Sand its northern boundary is the county line between Bates and Cass.
The land is generally prairie of good quality, but high and somewhat broken up by Mormon Fork and its tributaries.
Mormon Fork runs in an easterly direction nearly through the center of the township. There are timber and building
stone and water.
William R. Marshall, who came from Kentucky, settled on Mormon Fork in an early day. Mormon Fork gets its name
from the fact that some Mormons driven out of Jackson county in 1833 made a settlement on the creek in this township.
Barton Holderman was a pioneer, coming from Illinois. Gaugh L. Smith, Enoch Bolling, John M. Galloway, Joseph Cook,
Samuel Stewart, David Hufft, John Puffer and Elias Baldwin were early settlers.
About the close of the Civil War population increased rapidly, and among others came Joseph Mudd, Isaiah Brown,
Morris and James Roach, James and William Bagby, J. D. Masterson, Wilson Swank, A. D. Robbins, J. W. Hurdman, Peter
Black, P. G. Lightfoot, Richard Richardson, John Fenton and R. F. Canterbury.
The village of Burdett is situate in the western central part of the township on Mormon Fork. It was founded in
1870 by Daniel Cauthrien and Oliver B. Heath. The first business house was built by Tumbleson & Shorb. The
first postmaster was F. M. Tumbleson. A mill was erected the year the town was laid out, but destroyed by fire
in 1874. This first mill was built by A. D. Basore, and a second one by Lewis Adams, which was moved to Archie,
Cass county, in 1881. Burdett is a community center and considerable business is still carried on, but it is an
inland village.
Parkerville was one of the oldest towns in Bates county founded in June, 1857, by Wiley Parker, after whom it took
its name. It was situated about one and a half Mires directly south of, where Burdett stands, but not 'a vestige
remains to mark its grave. It is totally extinct yet history records the facts that John Frazier was the, proprietor
of a grocery store in its early and ambitious days; that John T. Peck was a pioneer; that Wilson & Feely were
merchants, and Doctor Thomas F. Atherton was the first physician, and W. H. Atherton the first blacksmith. "The
town was destroyed during the war of 1861" but it is not recorded how. There is absolutely nothing left to
tell of its life or death.
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